ArchivedLogs:Taking in Strays

Taking in Strays
Dramatis Personae Parley, Sloan(Anima)	1 June 2013 Man's best friends reunite and work out some ... differences?
Location <NYC> 603 {Mirror and Parley} - Village Lofts - East Village
Parley's rush home has come with a narrow little briefcase and something between formal wear with a dash of half-hearted style that would be /willing/ to talk business if you /really/ insist. The sweltering-muggy heatwave that's unfolded on New York City like God's open armpit has not meshed well with the prudent high mandarin collar and three-quarter length sleeves, all useful for hiding fur. Less useful for letting it /breathe/. He enters, closes the door behind him and /tosses/ his briefcase to the eclectically BRIGHT magenta vinyl couch, reaches behind his head and begins to PEEL his way out of his sweaty shirt. His fur. It is sweated down his spine in /rivulets/. Three years of neatly air conditioned facilities makes the torment a curious /smack/ of the uncontrolled reality that is freedom. Agoraphobia set in? You'd think /hardly/, for how he drapes himself out an open screenless window like a rug waiting to be BEATEN. Pant. Parley is under watch. Trailed from the lobby to the sixth floor, that first pant barely passes before a sharp rap at the door interrupts his peace. Accompanying: a softer, scratch of nails. Behind that singular barrier dividing home from hallway, a stray awaits. Conspicuous in a layered track-suit, hood pulled up over the head and the brim of a baseball cap jutting out, a woman taps her foot (and maybe, from behind, her tailbone ... wiggles), impatient. This is Sloan, an unfamiliar face comprised of elongated, almost canid features with her long nose and jowls, the former twitching at the sensory overload of sweat and apartment that permeates the air, an odor trail that led her right up to this very 603 at the Village Lofts. Again, there is a sharp *knock, knock*. Parley slithers back into the world of the upright in a slightly liquidy-natural motion that's not quite /grace/, but if it were polished and trying harder it might get close. With either hand still braced on the window frame and his eyes focused outward, he makes no move to /answer/ the damn door. But he does reach out, in a manner, to utilize a different sort of peephole. Sampling the flavor of the mind that comes knocking at his parlor door. ... or should that be mind/s/? It's a subtle touch, like a slight turbulence in a steady wind stream. Rrrripppleripple. Bathing past. From the soft, scraping thud of loosely curled knuckles to the tightened bang of a fist, the person(s) at the door seem intent on being answered. Vocally, Sloan even ventures a throat clearing, albeit it sounds coarser, graveled; it is almost animalistic. And yet... Confronting that soft breeze of mental grazing is a wall. It's foreign, but shallow - nothing difficult to blow over or sluice into for a deeper delve. In sum, it is a genial presence: one warm and alert, not unlike a dog if one was ever bored enough to /really/ empathize with man's best friend. Beyond /Sloan/ is something more complicated and /pulsating/. Like a sponge, it soaks up any psionic leakage of one mind spilling over into another. That, /that/ is definitely more familiar, but it is also somehow lesser - more, well, /porous/ to continue the analogy. << parley >> No invasion is bothered; Parley's is not an ability that facilitates digging. Only outward touch, crumpling softly against that wall like a breath of blown smoke. It /stops/, frozen, for a moment, at the touch back. And then... eases. Not relaxed. Just /dry/. << (you.) >> On the other side of the door, there's a sound to fingertips drumming down against the wood. Standing just to the other side of all its wood, all its locks, a hand pressed to the wood as though it were a chest against which his palm might find a heart beat. << (i'd assumed) you would (be dead by now. >> Regardless, like soft, absorbent tissue those thoughts probed contract, compress, shrivel - only to expand, wrung out in a surge of liquid-turned-gas. This /you/ buried behind that canine veneer expands in creeping tendrils that writhe and seek to latch onto -- anything. It's moist, and dripping to counteract that dry touch. << maybe-i-am-dead >> It's all one pooling statement. Outside, Sloan stands, mildly dazed, a lifeless husk of fur beyond the frame of wood bolted shut. Stiff, she rolls her shoulders: a little rustle of movement to prove she is still there. Wanting /inside/ much as does the thing within her. << open-up-and-find-out >> The small 'shfffhhh' from the door that remains so tauntingly barred; a hand brushing over flat surface. So tempting; the 'thmp' when this path inevitably passes over the knob. Turning it uselessly with all the locks still engaged. More tempting, perhaps - Parley's mind is a soft surface; malleable to touch, coated in only a thin warm membrane of shield so rarely used. Unlike such telepathic minds that reach out, that /burrow/ into the minds around them, his own is passive. It opens up, and lets other minds flow /in/... << (i'm busy.) >> Whispered-soft, he rolls open like a throat, as if to /dare/ her. And then he inquires, << (who are you riding.) >> Astute of hearing, flaps of skin hidden beneath hood, hat, and hair prick at the metallic click of the knob in its socket. Sloan leans her face in close to the surface of the door, nostrils flaring with a sharp scenting of the air. If not physically allowed access then perhaps this: she extends her mind and senses. However soft and luxuriating, however impressionable, Parley looms out of reach, dangling food and drink before gaseous fingers that drift ever-so-lightly across the permeable cerebral sheet of his mind. Abruptly, the sponge-y center of Anima bloats, reach cut off as ze withdraws, shooting sudsy bubbles from her cratered, pocketed exterior. *Plop-plop* << too-busy-for-a-friend >> Inflection, punctuation, some sign of inquiry lacks; there is only sterile fathoming. << pound-puppy>> Disjointed: << prison-break >> ... << again >> Ever pliant, there is yet /muscle/ in the mind so faintly at the end of fingertips - it flexes, like a heart beat against that passing palm, leaping into it with a rich, languid familiarity. So much the passing tawny flank broken up in camouflaging rosettes, arching up into touch and then trailing away with the lingering brush of tail. << (i don't keep friends.) >> He reminds. And his touch is /filtering/, it cleanses and straightens, the barbed brush of tongue that grooms, absently, along this spongy awareness. << (neither do you.)(well.) >> Where he grooms, a slow differentiation is defined; the thin crease between the end of Sloan's mind and the start of... << (unless this counts.) >> Click. Rattle. The door opens, Parley stood in the far left corner of the frame, one hand in a pocket, shoulder propped, features set to a dispassionate alignment. Dark eyes roam Sloan's body once as though he'd seen it all before, "You haven't been doing all that well for yourself at all, have you." The side of his mouth twitches up. Stays there. "Helene." *Plop-plop* floats more iridescent watery orbs, bursting against a feline flank without so much as proof of popping. Just, *splash* << who-has-time-for-friends-too-busy-locked-up >> Ze stresses once again. Recoiling against the bristled-sandpaper-tongue, all liquid evaporates, pores minimizing until a dry, crusted, shrunken remain shifts to a more brittle, crumbling texture. One displeasing to taste. << don't-know-mauled-the-last-one >> ... << oops? >> A puff of stale air escapes, dust-ridden to obscure the dividing presence where one psyche wraps around the other, and vice-versa. Sloan stands still while her reek precedes her, all wet-dog and matted fur visible where track-suit fails to clothe the dense, dingy, knotted coat of dog hair. "It's been years since I've been able to say otherwise." She strides on past him with the door finally open to her, reaching a clawed hand to touch his shoulder. It's not a warm gesture, it's a /deeper/ probe. Tactile connection established, the telepathic one infiltrates as it could not before. Parley sucks air in through his teeth, the invasion pouring in /smooth/ and thick to fill a mind ever fragmented into scraps and wafts; the barrier pulling taut against it like the water tension surface of a flat pool against a dry palm might lay temporarily flat - and then enters, where all things are novocain-cool. In the next moment, his grit loosens to a hard smile, and all the supple muscles of Parley's will streeeeetch out, luxuriate, and envelope the marauding presence in a slight -- /squeeze/. << (are you certain)(you want to do that?) >> So easily... the depth in his mind opens /deeper/. Come in. Come /all/ the way in... Parley lays his hand over Sloan's furry fingers. As though /pinning/ it there. "Are you hungry?" Not so much a wave as a geyser, Anima wells up again, a wall of liquid pushing forward to slip down between the cracks in a cool, drowning liquid embrace. Ze breaks against Parley, drawn into the numbing interior via capillary action, climbing up - or down, wherever - into him. Sloan's pupils dilate to round discs as Anima hovers between, caught between the synaptic bridge brokered by fingertips against the cloth of his shirt over his shoulder. << probably-not-unless-you-want-to-euthanize-the-dog >> Ultimately, ze sprays against him, all light foam breaking the surface of the ground before *squelch* the sponge sucks hir back into hirself. Sloan blinks, coherent enough to tighten her grip. "Starving." Cue dog-happy smile. So accommodating, the arterial channels, a snug fit stretching out as Parley gulps hir inward. Deeper, deeper - but he is not infinite, is he. The danger of a conduit is that where there is an in, there is inevitably an /out/. It comes rushing up fast, the inevitable through-and-through of an exit wound. The feeling of solid ground turning suddenly into fragile glass. That begins to /crack/... << (you'll want to keep her.) >> He advises; his mind held /stationery/, he makes Anima be the one to withdraw in this war of minds first, his fur /prickling/ at the tightened canine's grip. << if you (try to ride)(anyone else in this building) i will (see that you are)(dug out like a blackhead) and (put into)(a goldfish.) >> Reaching up a hand, he runs his fingers through the thick pelt of Sloan's snarled neck ruff. "Have a shower. There's a comb in the top left drawer." He /shrugs/ to free his shoulder. "I'll see what's in the kitchen." A *glug-glug* signals the /pouring/ into those neural pathways as Anima sucks hirself and squeezes herself through the complicated network of the brain - and so /slippery/ a one at that as to pass her unsolid contents through. Parley's mind, breaking up beneath her, is still familiar. There is no panic as fractures beging to insinuate along the surface, nor is there that sudden re-absorbance of the sponge; it's too late for that. Ze simply /seeps/ through, completing a circuit that sends hir gushing back into the stable territory of canine comfort. << yeah-okay-i'll-keep-taking-the-dog-for-walks-you-don't-alert-management-that-i-have-one >> She bargains, sending one last pulsating touch at him; once more gaseous, diffusing ... guilt? ... across the contact Sloan severs when Parley shrugs. Sloan sniffs - at herself. "You're so kind. I think I'll enjoy living here." She flashes one of those wide-drawn smiles, mouth more like a muzzle with slightly more pointed teeth bared. A furred hand reaches to shut the door behind her. No locks are bolted, but there is still something final about. The apartment just acquired a stray. Here to stay. And she is celebrating with that much needed bath, smelling her way to the bathroom, and then following the aroma of food back to the kitchen. Welcome home?